


A Fateful Encounter: First Times

by s_rix



Series: Fateful Encounter [1]
Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-12-01 14:24:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11488212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/s_rix/pseuds/s_rix
Summary: The first time he barges into her apartment uninvited—she kicks him square in the face.Then she lectures him endlessly about common courtesy and whatnot for fifteen minutes straight, and yells at his cat who's made a scratchpad of her walls.Oh, and she’s only wearing a towel.Four more break-ins after, she gives him the extra key to her front door. But he keeps going through the window anyway.--------In which Lucy experiences all of her 'firsts' with none other than Fairy Tail's resident fire-dragon slayer. The good and the bad.





	A Fateful Encounter: First Times

**…**

** A Fateful Encounter **

**Preface**

 

**_Love—a lone word rather hard to define, and the feeling itself, even harder to describe._**  

**_It’s the most infinite of vast paradoxes; the most inscrutable of mysteries. It’s the most unpredictable of reality’s abstract complexities—and in this whimsical world we live in, you can never know just when and where and how it’ll come your way._  ** **_Sometimes, you just have to trust your own heart to see what the eyes can’t, and say what words won't. Because it’s unseen, but felt; unspoken, yet expressed._ ** ****

**_And when found?_ **

__

**_That’s when it’s called a ‘Fateful Encounter’._ **

 

* * *

 

**i**

 

They say first times are never forgotten, but Lucy Heartfilia begs to differ. She has forgotten after all—the first time he gave her a piggyback ride, or the first time he tucked her to bed with a bedtime story; the first time he ever said the words “ _Happy birthday”,_ or maybe even, the first time he simply cared—the way a father would for his daughter.

Oh right—she sighs dejectedly.

_He hasn’t done any of those yet._

And living a dull young adult life, so dreary—of tedious business chatters and handshakes of settled deals over bitter wine, too bitter; over the years has she made a hobby of reading especially lengthy novels to pass time.

The dusty library, her refuge; and a thousand old books, her many friends.

 

Her only friends.

* * *

**ii**

So she runs away.

And it’s the first time she feels so unrestrained and limitless and  _free_  under midsummer’s rain _._  Cold sweat runs down her back, and her dainty feet start to sore—

But she’s far from stopping.

And where fate (and a bag of a hundred-thousand jewels) will take her an hour from then—a day, a week, a month—a year, even—

She simply throws all cares away and heads straight onto the unfamiliar path so vague.

 

 

_Yet so bright._

* * *

 

**iii**

“So, Natsu and Happy was it?”

She smiles, and it’s the first time she sees a pink-haired male and a talking blue cat—and whole roasted chicken get devoured in two seconds flat ( _and where did the plate go??_ ) 

“I’m Lucy. Nice to meet you.” 

"Mm!" Natsu manages to let out despite a mouth full of food.

It’s their first hello.

 _"Natsu's a Fairy Tail mage?!"_  

_"Aye!"_

 

* * *

 

**iv**

 

_“Come with me,”_  he says.

Never in her life has she been swayed by mere three words with such warmth and a spirit so fiery (burning down half of Hargeon port with it and the military chasing after them)—and suddenly, she thinks of her father a non-existent figment of her worst sorrows.

**_It’s the first time she feels it—a strange sense of—something—she can’t quite put into words—_ **

_And she smiles._

* * *

 

**v**

 

It’s the first time Lucy has seen anything like their lot, and it’s an all-out rampage between, apparently, the big shots of the guild. She gawks as tables are thrown and chairs are sent flying, fists come launching and booze come raining everywhere.

She turns to find Natsu standing triumphantly with a maniacal grin, twirling a pair of conspicuously familiar black boxers on his finger.

And she shrieks as she covers her eyes ( _but not really_ ) in haste, because it’s the first time she sees a man completely naked.

  

“Miss, would you be so kind as to lend me your underw—”

 **“AS IF!”**  

She hits him.

Hard.

_It’s the first time she’s been mistaken for a ‘Luigi’ as well._

_“IT’S LUCY!”_

* * *

**vi**

 

The first time he barges into her apartment uninvited—she kicks him square in the face.

Then she lectures him endlessly about common courtesy and whatnot for fifteen minutes straight, and yells at his cat who's made a scratchpad of her walls.

Oh, and she’s only wearing a towel. 

 

Four more break-ins after, she gives him the extra key to her front door. But he keeps going through the window anyway.

* * *

 

**vii**

It’s her first cargo ride to her first job.

She angrily accuses he’s fine with whomever blonde bimbo he’d tag along to town, but the motion-sickened fool brushes it off amidst his spinning head, saying so innocently it's because she’s pretty sweet and cool and—

_And weird._

So she punches him in the gut—then she sighs, defeated, and offers him her lap to lie on. There’s a ridiculous, overjoyed smile on his face as he takes the offer without a shred of reservation.

Lucy runs her fingers through pink locks soothingly as she watches him sleep—so peaceful, so innocent. And for a split moment, she thinks she sees, though fleeting—

_The little child who still cries for his father who had left._

 

**_They were quite the paradoxical pair—she thinks_  ** **_—_ **

**_—_**  Natsu with his tough exterior but a too soft heart, and Lucy with an unforgiving passion hidden beneath a beautiful shell.

_(And yet they shed the same tears.)_

* * *

 

**viii**

 

_Porn star_ , he calls him.

 _Flamebreath_ , he counters.

It isn't the first time she hears an argument so elementary between two, full-grown adults (never mind that one of them is almost naked). In fact, she's too used to it it'll be much more of a surprise to  _not_  see them bickering like distraught toddlers.  

So when Erza strides in, all brute and beauty, Lucy’s beyond surprised to see  _for the first time_  Natsu and Gray in tight arms, like the best buds they are— _not—_ and she concludes they’ve gone off their rockers.

 

_“E-Erza… Natsu and I are getting along well, j-just as always.”_

“ _AYE!_ ”

Lucy chokes on her drink and gasps for dear life.

* * *

**ix**

**She soon realizes Natsu’s a mystery she’ll never really quite figure out—but she tries, anyway.**

 

Like how Happy’s  _nakama_  and not transportation so ‘ _he’s okay,’_  quote unquote—and how he seems to have a certain fondness for sleeping on her bed.

“ _Because I like the scent_ ,” sleep-interrupted Natsu groggily drawls the one time she asks why.

So she buys a new set of sheets and washes them with a distinctly different fabric conditioner, but she still comes home the night after to the ever-present familiar lump drooling all over her sheets.  _“It’s still your scent,”_  he simply says, then goes back to sleep.

Oh.

Lucy’s face flushes red as she yells—‘IDIOT!’—to his snoring back, then stomps out of her room and sleeps on the couch for the night.

 

 

(She finds Natsu sprawled on the very same couch the next evening, and fixes a blanket over him before going up to her room.)

* * *

 

**x**

 

She's happy—she realizes—despite taxing jobs and rowdy guildmates and monthly rents and the occasional bruises on her body, she finds all of it has somehow naturally fell into her un-routinely days.

So she's not complaining, after one particular thug-round-up fiasco (courtesy of Natsu's overboardness and Erza's extra-enthusiasm), that she finds herself with a bad sprain on her ankle and an empty jewel bag. She's just a little bummed that an argument later, she's being carried home like a damsel-on-distress on Natsu's back, despite numerous attempts to convince him  _she's fine._

"Hey Luce," Natsu calls her for the first time, then he smiles brightly, "Today was fun, wasn't it?"

Lucy stares, then sighs, "It was," and she smiles back.

"Right? Let's have more fun tomorrow! The three of us, okay?" 

If Lucy's noticed how Erza and Gray are conspicuously absent in Natsu's weekend plans, she doesn't say a word, and instead nods with contented silence against Natsu's pink tresses. She's happy—she realizes—that somehow, along the way, she has become a part of Natsu's un-rountinely days just as well as he has become hers.

And she can't help but slefishly think that among all the other guild members, it's always Natsu and Lucy, and Lucy and Natsu (and Happy), with no one else in between.

Until—

* * *

**xi**

"Lisanna? Who's that?"

It's the first time Lucy hears the name, and it's the first time she feels a disgusting, sinking feeling in her chest before Cana even says anything. The woman puts down her booze, ungracefully wipes her lips, and faces Lucy with an unreadable, wistful expression.

"Ah, she's..." then the woman shakes her head and pats Lucy assuringly on the head, in a way that seem to say she  _knew something_ , "You... don't have to worry about her Lucy. After all, she's—"

* * *

**xii**

_"L-Lisanna? You're...alive?"_

_A smile, "I'm back, Natsu."_

 

* * *

 

**-tbc-**

**Author's Note:**

> For more NaLu goodness, please check out my other fic, F.T. Films: Behind the scenes!!  
> Kudos, Bookmark, and Review!


End file.
